Arun Kolatkar: The Bus — 100 MCQs with Explanations

His full name was Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (also spelled Balkrushna in some sources).

Kolatkar was born on 1 November 1932 in Kolhapur.

He was born in Kolhapur, Kolhapur State, British India (now Maharashtra).

Kolatkar died on 25 September 2004 in Pune, Maharashtra, aged 71.

He said he had "a pencil that had points at both the ends" — able to write in English from one end and Marathi from the other.

Jejuri won Kolatkar the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1977.

He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005 for his Marathi collection Bhijki Vahi ("A Soaked Notebook").

He worked as an art director and graphic designer in advertising agencies, including Lintas.

He is described as the only Indian poet other than Kabir to be featured on the NYRB World Classics titles.

He is known for minimalist and precise language, irony and wit, concrete imagery, colloquial/conversational tone, free verse, and absence of punctuation marks.

"The Bus" is explicitly identified as the first/opening poem of the Jejuri sequence.

"The Bus" is a poem by Arun Kolatkar, from his collection Jejuri.

Jejuri (1976) is the poetry sequence of which "The Bus" is the first poem.

Jejuri was issued in book form in 1976, after first appearing in a magazine in 1974.

Jejuri was first published in Opinion Literary Quarterly in 1974, and issued in book form in 1976.

"The Bus" opens the collection, marking the pilgrim's arrival; the sequence closes with "The Railway Station."

The collection consists of 31 poems, though some sources say 30, depending on how sections are counted.

The poems are framed between "The Bus" (arrival) and "The Railway Station" (departure), with the sequence framed between sunrise and sunset.

Jejuri is a temple town and pilgrimage site in Maharashtra, India, dedicated to Khandoba.

Khandoba is regarded as a warrior incarnation of Lord Shiva and patron deity of many pastoral and agrarian communities in Maharashtra.

Jejuri lies near Pune in western Maharashtra, on the old Poona-Sátára road, about ten miles south-east of Sásvád.

Kolatkar visited Jejuri in 1963 with his brother and a friend, composing poems soon after returning.

Before visiting, he had read about Jejuri in a book on temples and legends of Maharashtra, and found it "an interesting place."

The collection employs the journey motif throughout, linking the physical journey to Jejuri with a search or quest.

The poem is a narrative/descriptive poem written in free verse.

The poem is written in free verse with no fixed rhyme scheme or meter.

The poem uses second-person narration ("you"), creating immediacy and reader involvement.

The poem is set inside a state transport bus travelling to Jejuri, beginning in darkness and ending with sunrise.

The tone is described as reflective, contemplative, ironic, detached, and observational.

As the opening poem, "The Bus" establishes the narrator as alienated from the religious tradition of which the pilgrimage is a part.

"the tarpaulin flaps are buttoned down / on the windows of the state transport bus."

The poem states the flaps are buttoned down "on the windows of the state transport bus."

The poem specifies a "state transport bus" — an ordinary, government-operated public vehicle.

The flaps remain buttoned down "all the way up to jejuri," the entire length of the journey.

The sealed, closed bus interior symbolises barriers to perception and a claustrophobic sense of confinement.

"a cold wind keeps whipping / and slapping a corner of tarpaulin at your elbow."

The poem specifies the wind slaps the tarpaulin corner "at your elbow."

"you look down to the roaring road" follows the description of the whipping wind.

"Roaring" imitates the loud, deep sound of the road/bus, an example of onomatopoeia (auditory imagery).

The wind is given human-like violent action ("whipping," "slapping"), which is personification.

"you search for the signs of daybreak / in what little light spills out of bus."

The little light is described as spilling "out of bus," the only illumination available to the traveler.

"your own divided face in the pair of glasses / on an oldman's nose is all the countryside you get to see."

The glasses are explicitly "on an oldman's nose."

The face is split visually by the two separate lenses of the spectacles, producing the "divided face" image.

Critics read the divided face as depicting the narrator's split self, caught between religious belief and modern skepticism.

The poem states the reflected divided face "is all the countryside you get to see," replacing any actual outside view.

It is ironic that a journey which should reveal the outside world instead reflects the traveler back to himself.

The old man never speaks or acts; he is significant chiefly as the bearer of the glasses reflecting the narrator's face and of the caste mark symbolising tradition.

The closing line states, "you don't step inside the old man's head," denying the narrator access to the old man's inner faith.

"you seem to move continually forward. / toward a destination just beyond the castemark / beyond his eyebrows."

The destination is described as being just beyond the caste mark located between the old man's eyebrows.

The caste mark is a religious marking, representing traditional religious identity and codes of faith.

The phrase "just beyond" conveys a destination that remains uncertain and not fully attainable, located symbolically past tradition.

Critics interpret the sought destination as "a state of liberation from all signs, codes and forms of religious faiths as well as practices."

The destination is figuratively located on the old man's face, a metaphorical mapping of an abstract goal onto a physical feature.

"outside, the sun has risen quitely" [quietly], contrasting with the violent imagery that follows.

"it aims through an eyelet in the tarpaulin."

An "eyelet" is a small hole, here in the tarpaulin, through which the sunbeam passes.

"and shoots at the oldman's glasses" — the sunlight is described using violent, weapon-like verbs.

The sun is personified as "aiming" and "shooting," introducing military/weapon imagery into what should be a peaceful sunrise.

"a sawed off sunbeam comes to rest gently / against the driver's right temple."

The sunbeam rests "against the driver's right temple."

"Sawed-off" describes a weapon with a shortened barrel, typically a shotgun, extending the poem's weapon imagery.

Pairing a gentle resting motion with violent weapon imagery creates an unsettling, ironic juxtaposition.

Critics note that the light imagery evokes weapons "resting on people's foreheads like a 'sawed off' shotgun," hinting at mortality beneath ordinary experience.

"the bus seems to change direction," immediately following the sunbeam imagery.

The ambiguous change of direction reinforces the poem's pervasive uncertainty about the journey and its destination.

"at the end of bumpy ride" describes the physical roughness of the journey.

"with your own face on the either side" — the divided-face motif recurs at the journey's end.

Seeing only his own face, repeatedly, underscores the narrator's isolation and inward-turned perspective throughout the journey.

The poem states, "when you get off the bus," marking the end of the physical journey.

The poem closes with the isolated, emphatic line, "you don't step inside the old man's head."

The line figuratively expresses the narrator's failure to enter or understand the old man's traditional, faith-based inner world.

The poem ends without resolving the gap between the narrator's skepticism and the old man's faith, leaving a sense of distance.

The divided face and the final refusal/inability to "step inside" the old man's head together dramatise the narrator's unresolved inner split.

The wind is given human-like violent actions ("whipping," "slapping"), an instance of personification.

The sun is given human/agentive actions ("aims," "shoots"), which is personification.

The poem does not use "like" or "as"; it directly calls the sunbeam "sawed off," an implicit/extended metaphor built from weapon imagery.

Absence of punctuation, a known characteristic of Kolatkar's style, produces a continuous, conversational flow that mirrors the ongoing bus journey.

The second person creates immediacy and reader involvement, making the experience feel directly shared.

The divided face reflected in glasses is a visual image central to the poem's meaning.

"Roaring road" appeals to the sense of hearing, making it auditory imagery.

The cold wind whipping and slapping at the elbow appeals to the sense of touch, making it tactile imagery.

The irony lies in a religious pilgrimage yielding not spiritual insight but only the narrator's own divided reflection and unresolved doubt.

The sealed, tarpaulin-covered bus limits perception, symbolising isolation and restricted view of the outside world.

The ordinary modern bus carrying pilgrims to an ancient shrine embodies the coexistence of modernity and tradition.

The caste mark represents traditional faith, which the skeptical, rationalist narrator cannot fully access or share.

The weapon-like light imagery hints at mortality and hidden violence within an apparently peaceful natural event.

Repeatedly seeing only his own reflection emphasises the narrator's alienation and inability to connect with the old man's inner world.

The movement from night to sunrise suggests a movement toward awakening or insight, though the poem stops short of full spiritual resolution.

This matches Kolatkar's own stated skepticism about religion — observing faith without committing to a fixed position on God.

The poem is narrated throughout using second-person address ("you").

This sequence follows the poem's actual order of images from the opening tarpaulin description to the closing line.

Apart from the addressed "you," the only individualised figures named are the old man (with the glasses and caste mark) and the driver.

The old man's actual face is never described; we only see the narrator's own reflection in his glasses and the caste mark near his eyebrows, reinforcing his inaccessibility.

Setting the final line apart from the regular three-line stanzas gives "you don't step inside the old man's head" added emphasis as the poem's concluding thought.

The standalone final line concentrates attention on the poem's culminating insight about the limits of the narrator's understanding.

The bus journey becomes a vehicle for exploring the unresolved gap between the old man's traditional faith and the narrator's modern skepticism.

As the opening poem, "The Bus" sets up the central concern of the whole Jejuri sequence: the complex, unresolved relationship between faith and reason.